Wellington on a Plate
The fifth annual Wellington region-wide culinary celebration is set in this New Zealand city for August 9 through 25, 2013.
Some 110 of Wellington’s eateries are participating in this year’s Visa Wellington on a Plate.
Among the 113 festival events scheduled are night markets, day trips, gourmet tasting events, food trucks, hands-on dumpling and pizza making, master classes and hotly contested ‘battle of the burgers’, baking and top chef competitions.
The festival begins with Beervana — a big weekend August 9 and 10 celebrating some 200 local brews and food matches.
Also that first weekend is Prison Gate to Plate, an inauguration fine dining experience created and served behind bars of the Rimutaka Prison. The 70 count dinner will be delivered by the prison inmates and Chef Martin Bosley, who has spent the past seven months tutoring six prisoners in kitchen arts. (Alas, Road Trips Foodies: this event is already sold out.)
Centerpiece is two weeks of Dine Wellington, when 110 restaurants will offer lunchtime and dinner set menus inspired by iconic regional flavors and products.
Other events include these:
*The Sugar Club Retrospective at Capitol restaurant is a blast from the past harking back to the 80’s menus in Peter Gordon’s original Wellington establishment.
*Wellington’s film central, Miramar’s Coco at Roxy Theater, will hold An Unexpected Party in the Middle of Middle-earth, making merry with a Shire supper of Pudding Lane pork pies, seed cakes and Tuatara ales accompanied by song and merry-making.
*Zealandia: Karori Sanctuary, a dinner date with New Zealand’s famous flightless parrot Sirocco and a two-course meal inspired by the natural kai / food from the forest.
*Lamb-connoisseurs will enjoy the wool shed lunch on Pirinoa Station, a 16,000 hectare working farm in the Wairarapa.
(Photo courtesy of Wellington on a Plate)
